Biden’s Evolving Obama Explanation

Below, Jonathan has a good summary of the Biden flap from yesterday. (And he’s probably buying up Biden ’08 t-shirts on eBay to resell to ironic hipsters at this very moment.) Granted, Joe Biden inserting foot in mouth is hardly news but what struck me as fishy was his evolving explanation of what he meant. On CNN yesterday afternoon he said that his mother had a saying, “clean as a whistle, sharp as a tack,” and that using that context, he meant that Obama was astute. But last night on The Daily Show, he said that he meant to say “fresh” (as in fresh ideas) rather than “clean.” So which is it, fresh or sharp? If calling Obama “clean” was not a slur, wouldn’t his explanation have remained constant? No doubt he had the benefit of several advisers in the meantime, but the changing story seems to signal that Biden is rightly ashamed of his original impulse and is casting around for a better explanation.